Trying to avoid currency issues

[Christoffer Lernö]

Something I don't want get into with Ygg is currency issues, so where it's possible I've tried to avoid them. For example you roll stats, don't place points.

Another thing is that every point in your stat corresponds to 1 point of advantage. Gaining an extra point of strength immediately translate to 1 extra die of damage and similar for the other stats. This is of course to avoid the "bonus threshold optimization". (Incidentally although I'm guilty of doing that a lot I won't miss not having the opportunity)

However, there seems to be no way of avoiding currency issues when creating character abilities. I'm deliberately avoiding skills and skill lists. So abilities is the only area aside from deciding on character class where the player selects something as opposed to rolling.

And it's not only starting abilities, but additional abilities taken as the character progresses. But let's look at the starting abilities problem first.

Obviously I don't want to make certain classes suck from the very beginning. Thus their abilities should somehow be balanced. I've separated combat skills into a stat-like rating which can't be increased at character creation which ensures all classes have equal chances at having a high fighting ability which is in line with my approach with making all characters more or less fighters with specialist skills put on top of that.

Let's look at some abilities and talents from my draft of character classes:
Climb walls
Stealth
Resist Damage
Shapeshifting
Sniper
Set Ambush
Claw Martial Arts

It's obvious these, although helpful in getting a definate flavour for the particular class, are not equal in usefulness. For example "climb walls". How often are you gonna use that ability? It apparently describes extraordinary abilities at climbing, but if you compare it to "Shapeshifting" and "Resist Damage" it seems useless.

Now the standard remedy is to lower the cost of useless stuff and increase it on useful ones.

But is this really helping in any way? Does it make the player any more happy that climb walls is cheaper? No it doesn't.

For all it's "you get this and only this" nazi fashion in leveling up with D&D you knew you were improving all characteristic skills as you went along, and when you needed the climb walls skill you could actually do it.

Compare this to other systems where you might start with a lot of profession specific skills and then naturally gravitated to a jack-of-all-trades-type of character because your profession skills were simply not used enough or not useful enough.

It's not fun to pay points to stay in the archetype and get punished for it, but that's what frequently is the case.

Of course, this problem only arise in Ygg and other frpgs because of the traditional (and in my opinion very enjoyable) focus on character improvment.

Thus ability balancing both at start and in progression becomes very important. In most frps the character starts out pretty well defined but from that they either become less and less distinguishable from each other as the game progresses or the game gives very little input on the direction of the improvment of the character (D&D).

Is there a way out of this?

Maybe I should point out that in distinguishable I don't necessarily mean they should have AD&D style orthogonal classes. I just mean that the original character concept whatever it might be. I mean even making characters in a classless system we usually start out with a character concept. However, in the course of play this concept usually becomes washed out and the character becomes a jack-of-all-trades. It would have been acceptable if the character went from one concept to another clear concept, but in actual play that's not what tends to happen.

Introducing classes is simply a way of providing a clear, "fits with the setting" character concept. But if this get's washed out as the game progresses we have a problem. However, enforcing how character development should go (D&D style) isn't very attractive either.

[Jasper]

I'll address your main point in a sec, but first:

But is this really helping in any way? Does it make the player any more happy that climb walls is cheaper? No it doesn't.

I really can't see why you think this is the case (and I'm not being hostile -- just miffed).  The player's goal is to have a character just as effective as those of his friends.  If his single ability Climb Walls is inneffective in practice, his aims would be thwarted, I agree.  But if you give him additional abilities as well, what's the problem?

Of course if you give a character more abilities he will be more "spread out" than his fellows.  I think it's just a decision you have to make: do you want all abilities to be equal so that no one has more of them, or not?  There's no right answer.

As for characters becoming Jacks-of-all-trades, it sounds like you really do want to restrict their selection, but not absolutely.  Why not just make certain skills/abilities fall within certain "spheres" -- there can be overlap.  At char creation, give each character several spheres.  Later, he can buy skills within the spheres at normal cost.  "Related" spheres cost a bit more, and unrelated spheres either cost a lot, or are off-limits.  

Alternately, relate every individual skill, sort of like the proficiency defaults in Riddle of Steel.  I might already have Sneak.  I want to buy Climb Walls.  I see that under the Sneak listing in the rules, Cimb Walls is a related skill, level 1, meaning I can buy it for cheap.  Pick Locks, on the other hand, is only related level 3, so I have to pay, say, three times as much.  That seems to direct player's purchases without absolutely restricting them ala D&D.

[Matt Machell]

The simple answer to avoiding people becoming jacks of all trades, is to make their skills useful and effective. In many FRPGs the players all eventually gravitate towards combat powers, simply because they are the most effective way of solving problems.

If a character who is a charismatic bard, can't talk down a rampaging mob, and must resort to fighting them, what use are his skills? Build usefulness into the system. Both Exalted and Earthdawn do this, in their own ways.

Another solution is to make skills less specific. Climb walls seems too specific to be useful outside one niche, make it a climb skill, or athletics. By making it cover more areas, you've made it more useful.

-Matt

[Christoffer Lernö]

The simple answer to avoiding people becoming jacks of all trades, is to make their skills useful and effective.

Mmm.. I tried to do that, but I run into a different problem then. Not that it's entirely stopping me from the approach, but it's not as straightforward as it might seem.

For example, let's say there is the power to calm down a rampaging mob. To make that useful the bard should have a fair chance of doing it. Nothing is so annoying as when you finally get a chance to use your special power you fail at it. Ok. You pick that skill. Meanwhile the specialist fighters are picking all sorts of specialized fighting abilities which are appropriate for THEIR roles. Unfortunately after picking this skill and a few others you kind of exhausted all of the bard-ish skills. What next?

To make it work you have to make just as many skills available to the bard as the specialist fighter. However, that might not be very easy, especially if you put pretty broad abilities into the bard skills to begin with (to make them useful).

[Valamir]

Matt is right on.  
Something I've seen a thousand times (and perpetrated many times myself) is the "hit 'em where they're weak" GMing ploy.

In fact, this ploy is so ingrained that I've actually seen in actively promoted on various "tips" sites.  "How do you stop a combat god..." "Put him in a social situation...then he'll regret spending all those points on combat and not being better rounded"

This is definitely the stick part of carrot and stick and in retrospect led to alot of completely dysfunctional play.

What it basically means is that PCs are never allowed to do what they're supposed to be good at.  The persuasion failed...you'll have to fight.  The fight is overwhelming you'll have to talk.

The reason so many people than concentrate on combat abilities, is because they are usually the most universally applicable.

If you're going to go the "abilities" route, the way to ensure some built in balance is to make sure, as Matt said, to make the abilities useful.

My bard should be able to use his "wit and charm" ability in the middle of a fight as a defensive action instead of parrying.  If successful, he avoids being hit (for any of a number of reasons) just like parrying.  

I can think of a couple of mechanical ways to help do this.
 
1) the more extreme method:  think in terms of event resolution rather than task resolution.  "There's going to be a fight, what skill are you going to use" "I'm going to use my Climb Walls skill" <roll, roll> "You succeed, what happens" "As the thug's charge I leap up the side of a nearby building just ahead of their swings...climb to the roof and am gone".

2) Carry over effects:  Think Sorcerer / Donjon.  Take any skill in any situation and describe how that skill might help in the current situation.  Make a roll.  Carry over extra successes into the next "real" roll.
"He's attacking you" "I'm going to try and distract him with some witty reparte" <roll, roll> "You got 2 extra successes"  "I'll roll those successes into my defense roll"

[Christoffer Lernö]

I think the carry over method or the extreme thing is very important, although it shouldn't be overdone. Still thanks for pointing it out, I almost forgot about it.

However, it doesn't quite solve the main issue, which is about encouraging/forcing character specialization. For example, if climb walls is really good, why don't I take both climb walls and fighting skills? Heck that way I'm doubly covered and I might even be able to optimize them even more that way.

I guess what I'm saying is I'd like the players to shape their character according to some plan and not just pick skills because they are useful. Naturally the first step IS to make all skills useful. But that wasn't anything I was going to forget about anyway. But that brings me to the second point. What is stopping the players from making characters with a whole menu of skills? Obviously one could make abilities taken only once or twice rather worthless to disencourage them, but aren't we back to square one then? Making the skills useless again? Or at least useless unless you know a lot about them.

An obvious way out might be to let some classes start with very high levels of skill right off the bat. Like the thief with climb walls. However, then we run into problems if we want to let the thief learn more cool thieving skills as he gets better. Since we already "postulated" that skills are bad to begin with, so will his new skill of I dunno, "Fence Stolen Stuff" be. So bad that it's pretty much useless. ... and we run into the same problem once again.

[Valamir]

I'm not sure what you're saying.  There are about a zillion and one different ways to have characters specialize.  Professional templates have been around since at least Call of Cthulhu.  I'm not sure what the difficulty is.  Pick one.  Write the rules...PLAY THE GAME...judge what worked and what didn't from ACTUAL PLAY not from speculation.  You're starting to chase your tail again.

I do this to.  What I usually do is take about a month or two off...don't even look at it, do other things.  Than pick it back up refreshed.  I did that several times with Universalis (which is why we had to pick up the books for Gen Con from the printer...the morning of GenCon)...but it really helped me out.

Specifically on the "Fence stolen goods" question.  I'm not sure what you mean by useless.  I can think of several ways to make such a skill indespensable...

[Walt Freitag]

If you want to formalize what Ralph and Matt suggested, then it becomes a matter of balancing the scope (range of situational applicability) of the skills. I concur that "climb walls" is too limited in scope compared with others on your list. I think it makes more sense to view this as a "scope" problem than as an effectiveness problem.

Let's look at this list again:

Climb walls
Stealth
Resist Damage
Shapeshifting
Sniper
Set Ambush
Claw Martial Arts

The two you picked out as being most useful are Resist Damage and Shapeshifting. And this is not at all surprising, because both of these skills have a wide variety of uses. Shapeshifting ability typically confers most or all of the following uses:

- Enhanced senses
- Tracking ability
- Stealth and concealment
- Fast long-distance movement
- A very effective (though very limited in variety) disguise
- An alternative combat technique

Avoiding Damage sounds more specific, but it's not; it implies as many different skills as there are different kinds of damage:

- Breaking falls
- Dodging missiles
- Blocking with weapon in combat
- Blocking with shield, armor, or improvised objects in combat
- Knowledge of physical phenomena (e.g. knowing to try to stay under fire but over poison gas)
- Protecting vulnerable points in hand to hand fighting
- Good peripheral senses
- High pain threshold

No wonder "climb walls" seems kind of puny. Even "climb" doesn't quite measure up. But you could have an even more general ability called perhaps "mobility" that might include:

- Climbing walls, trees, ropes, natural stone, wood frameworks, etc.
- Swimming
- Maneuvering in tight spaces
- Avoiding entanglement (e.g. nets or webs)
- Escape from personal physical constraints e.g. nets, webs, quicksand, being tied up

"Sniper" is already comparably broad, if it's assumed to include not just sharpshooting but other arts useful to an effective sniper:

- Camouflage
- Stealth
- Prepared and improvised concealment
- A degree of resistance to effects of ordinary heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and immobility, from training in remaining concealed for hours or days
- Knowledge of layout of military encampments, seige tactics, command structures, town and castle guard practices, etc.
- Superior eyesight
- Range estimation

Does that mean "stealth" alone is too limited? Not necessarily. A generalized "stealth" ability could include forms and applications of stealth that would go beyond what the "sniper" skill would imply.

- Stealthy movement
- Stealthy climbing (far more limited in what can be climbed than the "special mobility" skill, but silent and stealthy)
- Stealthy disabling or killing by surprise ("silence the guard")
- Improvised concealment
- Silent communication
- Conducting others with no special stealth skills in stealth situations ("wait for my signal... wait... now! move move move!")
- Superior hearing

Clearly there is, and should be, overlap at the level of the individual component abilities that make up a skill set. The "sailor" skill set would include climbing too, though perhaps limited to ropes and rigging, as well as "weather sense" that would also be shared with farmers and rangers.

Thus, "Set Ambush" could be part of more than one skill set, perhaps including "brigandage," "squad tactics," and "forest warfare."

In this system you have, of course, two different skill scopes. There are what I've called skill sets, which are what you pay for, and there are the individual component skills, which are what you use in instances of play. Balance is achieved by putting more or fewer skills into the skill set depending on how useful the individual skills are, and sometimes also by limiting and expanding the skills in an appropriate way for their skill set context (e.g. sailors' climbing ability is limited to ropes; but that ability with ropes goes beyond simple climbing to include the ability, given the needed tools and time, to lift other people safely or to move large objects). That way, you can achieve your goal of having all the skills (that is, all the skill sets) cost the same.

Skill sets have some of the advantages (and disadvantages) of traditional character classes, and function at an intermediate scope between classes and skills/feats. Like character classes, they cause characters to progress in a broad range of defined related skills (thus retaining a degree of specialization, but not being so specialized as to only be useful in unusual situations); unlike character classes, having more than one skill set would be the norm, and there should be many more to choose from. (Because of the overlap factor, there could even be far more skill set choices than there are different individual skills that go into them.)

Of course, lots of systems have skill sets or "skill packages" of one sort or another. The difference here is that it's the "packages" and not the individual skills in them that are tied into the system's currency. Also, you would presumably be defining many different and colorful skill sets in advance, rather than provide a few examples and telling players to invent their own as most skill package systems do. Even more unusual is the idea of balancing them so they all cost the same.

Of course, you could take the entirely opposite (and more common) approach and instead of expanding the limited-scope skills like climb walls and set ambush into skill sets, you could break the wider-scope ones like shapeshifting and resist damage into smaller units. It's going to be much harder to equalize all the skill costs this way, as you wish to do. Also, in my opinion, it's dull. You can put a lot more color into a skill set than into a specific skill.

Either way, you should recognize that much of the scope and balance problem with the example list you gave results from the list being a mixture of single individual skills and descriptors that imply many different individual skills.

- Walt

[Le Joueur]

Considering Valamir's comment on "hit 'em where they're weak" ploy, my suggestion is to lay the gamemastering advice out saying basically, "if they take it, let 'em use it" in regards to abilities.  But then I covered that in detail back in The Fundamental Particles of Character Class, when I spoke of 'contractual obligations' created when both the world and the character are created.

Or, simply, tell 'em that the ploy Valamir cited is bad form.

Other than that, I echo the "you can't balance abilities because situations differ" commentary.

Fang Langford

[Marco]

A few thoughts:

1. I don't necessiarily think a bard should be able to use his fast-talk in (say) combat with a dragon. I mean, for some games that's fine (and even cool)--but if the game is even marginally simulationistic I think I disagree with the "should" part.

2. The obvious solution to the "let them use their skills" or "hit them where they're weak" business is to simply run a game where all kinds of things happen and there's a spread of usefulness. I've had groups work fine where they go to a party and the socializers dominate and then go into a dungeon and fighters go out in front. Of course if you do enough of this then everyone will have some domain in each area (my fighter was a "body guard" to two magicians and got to do plenty of intimidation role-playing and it was fun being the under-estimated "dumb warrior" around a bunch of mages (NPC's) who thought they were smarter than they were).

3. The utility of shape-shifting vs. climbing has been covered. If it's worth less it should take up less of the effectiveness of the character (assuming "balance" is a goal).

But really, any in-game effectiveness "balance" assumes, I think, a currency system anyway. If you accept that some things are worth more than others then you have try to guestimate a magnitued of difference and there you go (and I agree with Val, Fence Stolen Goods is very useful in the right world--if you create classes make sure they have something rewarding to do in the world).

Final Minor Quibble: In the "Carrot and the Stick" the stick is used to hold the carrot on a string before the donkey (who never reaches it)--not to beat the donkey. (ask me what I tell the technical managers I work with who say they've got a "Show Stopper" bug in the code). ;)

-Marco

[Walt Freitag]

I assume a "show-stopper" bug is a bug that was so enjoyed and appreciated by the users that the project was delayed while they stood up to applaud?

I echo Marco's take on "you can't balance abilities because situations differ." Obviously if the player characters are out chasing pirates on the high seas, the character with the sailing abilities is going to get more use of his skills than the character with the mining and delving abilities. The balance condition that Christoffer appears to be interested in, as it relates to skills and character advancement, is in a longer time frame than that.

Because of the situation dependence, the system alone cannot balance skills, but in the long term the gamemaster can -- as long as the system doesn't make it impossible by making skills like "avoiding damage" that pay off twenty times a session cost the same as skills like "bribe judge" that are rarely useful unless the whole plot is deliberately focused on bringing that particular skill into play.

Ygg has currency, but Christoffer asked for an alternative to pricing the skills according to their estimated general usefulness. The simple alternative I'm suggesting (call it the "one dollar store" approach) is to adjust the value of each package so they all cost the same. And (unlike in a one dollar store) making that fixed value relatively high, so that players can select for flavor and still be sure to get real expected (though of course subject to situation) effectiveness from each selection. What I hope was clear from context, though I didn't state it, is that when players improve a skill set, the whole package is improved, even those skills that might not have been situationally useful so far. That way, as in a class system, when you need an only-occasionally-applicable skill from a skill set it's there, without having had to make great sacrifices in other areas to acquire or maintain it.

- Walt

[Mike Holmes]

Because of the situation dependence, the system alone cannot balance skills

I think I could dispute that. But for the purposes of this game, the statement is correct.

The simple alternative I'm suggesting (call it the "one dollar store" approach) is to adjust the value of each package so they all cost the same. And (unlike in a one dollar store) making that fixed value relatively high, so that players can select for flavor and still be sure to get real expected (though of course subject to situation) effectiveness from each selection. What I hope was clear from context, though I didn't state it, is that when players improve a skill set, the whole package is improved, even those skills that might not have been situationally useful so far. That way, as in a class system, when you need an only-occasionally-applicable skill from a skill set it's there, without having had to make great sacrifices in other areas to acquire or maintain it.

This is very much like old-style D&D classes before there were choices regarding skills and feats. Perhaps you could just have very small classes. Like the burglar class could be different from the brigand class. The one has more "thieving" skills, and the other has more combat, but on balance they're equal in value game-wise.

Reminds me of Traveller generation, or less so the background packages from Run out the Guns, and TROS, as well. You know what it really reminds me of, a CRPG called...Darklands? I think? You ran around Germany fighting robber barons and satanists? Anyhow, generating a character was a matter of taking chunks of development that represented a few years of time (character age was based on how many packages were taken; you could be very experienced but old if you wanted).

The only problem with these is that they do not necessarily follow the character's training after development. All these systems drop that sort of development, and start to follow a system whereby the character purchases all their skills individually. What you get if you try to use this for further development are situattions like the following: perhaps there are three skills in the burglar package that it makes sense for my character to improve in, but not a fourth, as he's had no exposure to it whatsoever. In which case getting it as part of an improvement purchase makes about as much sense as, well, leveling up in D&D.

Still, if you can swallow that sort of development, then I'd say go with Walt's idea. In fact the more you put in the packages the better. Definitely makes sense for pre-play generation at the very least. You could follow that model, where after Chargen, development is by individual skill, but then you're left with the currency issue. Round and round we go.

Mike

[Marco]

The topic of my first post was "what's wrong with currency issues?" And I think I'll ask it.

Is it a complexity issue? A "there can't be a perfect cost" lament? Is it a flavor or speed thing?

I mean, one possibility for balancing a game would be a market economy. Each time someone takes a skill, raise it's price--I know this isn't actually feasible for a traditional pencil and paper RPG--but I'm pointing out that there are a lot of ways to address a currency issue and as Mike pointed out, they're hard to get rid of in a simulationist structure where balance is a goal.

An alternative would be to give everyone "Five Dragons." Being Damage Resistant costs 2 and a shape shifter costs 3. All the thieving stuff you'd want costs 1. The numbers are low and there's still currency--but it's simple and flavorful (ok, don't use 'Dragons'--that might be kinda dumb ... but whatever).


-Marco
[ For JAGS we built in diminishing returns to several point-value systems ... especially supers ... and in cases where we can we break up what you can purchase into normal character stuff and "Archetype" stuff. Its not going to please the people who don't like point-based chargen but it's a different take on Hero where everything is (was?) linear, and GURPS where racial and super powers come out of the same pool of points making high-point characters easy to screw the system with. ]

[Valamir]

I mean, one possibility for balancing a game would be a market economy. Each time someone takes a skill, raise it's price--I know this isn't actually feasible for a traditional pencil and paper RPG--but I'm pointing out that there are a lot of ways to address a currency issue and as Mike pointed out, they're hard to get rid of in a simulationist structure where balance is a goal.
-Marco

Amber did this quite nicely with an auction mechanic.  I've often wanted to see design by Auction for a "regular" RPG, just to see if it would work.  Everybody bids on Combat Ability.  Regardless of bid, the high bid Starts with Level 5, the Low bid with Level 1 and the others in between.  Same for "Thief Skills", "Ranger Skills", "Paladin Skills" "Wizard Skills" etc.  I had doodled around with this for D&D (hense the above skill choices) where the bid currency was future XPs...max of 50,000 in the hole.

There is a board game (Eurogames I think) called Vinci (think AH Civilization crossed with History of the World run through the European Filter).  Each civilization consisted of 2 randomly selected abilities.  Some combos were killer, some were pathetic.  Several combos are displayed in order at the top of the board.  If you take the first one offered, its free.  If there is a "better one" farther down you can take it but have to pay VPs for each one skipped.  The VPs are saved with the combo and taken along with the combo by whoever chooses it.  Eventually a pathetic combo gets skipped so many times that no matter how pathetic it is, the VPs you get to claim make it worth it.  Its perfectly self balancing, not only does it balance which abilities are better, but it takes into account synergies between abilities, and play group styles that put greater or lesser priority on certain abilities.

I mention it because it is a near perfect example of what Marco is talking about, and would be very cool to see in an RPG.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, Ralph makes a good point. I think these sorts of things can be put into RPGs. Actually, Marco's first suggestion sounded good to me. First bid to see who goes first with your points, and then with the remaining ones start purchasing triats one at a time going through the purchased order repeatedly. Each time you take a level (or three, or whatever makes sense), the cost goes up by one for the next purchaser, whoever it may be. Or you can box people out by paying a special fee to have the option on the next purchase.

This maintains balance automatically (the players have only themselves to blame if they mess it up), and serves as niche protection simultaneously.

Mike